Intro to VC: Cloud Computing

Hello all, thanks for tuning in. In my previous post, which you can find here, I provided a high level overview of the technology industry and discussed a few of the most exciting tech sub-sectors, including cloud computing, cybersecurity, blockchain and artificial intelligence. In this post, I’m going to dive a little bit deeper into the cloud computing sub-sector. Specifically, I’m going to provide a brief history of cloud computing, touch on a few areas of innovation in the space, and give an overview of SaaS (because you can’t talk about cloud computing without a section on SaaS).

History of Cloud Computing

You’re probably asking, why do I need a history lesson on the cloud computing industry? Feel free to skip this section if you’d like to but, in my opinion, it’s difficult to get a feel for where an industry is going without understanding how it has developed. Let’s get started!

The Pre-Internet Era

The ideas behind cloud computing have been around for a long time. Although the current form of cloud computing did not take off until the late 1990’s, the idea of shared computing began in the 1960’s when mainframe computers became popular. At that time, computers were massive and expensive machines. Mainframe computers were invented to be one centralized hub that could be accessed from a number of…